Party identification has been shown to be comparatively weak and volatile in Japan. A search for alternative elements of continuity in partisan behavior indicates that many Japanese vote regularly for the same party, and for roughly one-fifth of the electorate this is done in the absence of a stable party identification. Following earlier work by Ivor Crewe, these nonidentifiers who still vote regularly for the same party are termed habitual voters. Habitual voters are less involved in issues, have fewer party images and have fewer ties to external groups that support their party than stable party identifiers. What makes the habitual voters stand out most is their absence of emotional commitments to the party they vote for regularly in elections and lack of negative feelings toward the parties they do not support. Habitual voting thus reflects one of the dominant traits of Japan's political culture, which is a strong tendency toward affective neutrality. Habitual voters are a new type of nonaffective partisan not anticipated in traditional political behavior theories, and as such their presence in Japan should be of interest to students of comparative political behavior.
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